Londoners had plenty of choices among newspapers carrying the news of the birth of Prince George in July. SANG TAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Anyone who thinks newspapers are dead hasn't been to London recently. Despite financial setbacks and a phone-tapping scandal that led to the corporate suicide of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid, you can still get a hernia hefting one day's worth of daily newspapers.

Stop in any “news agents,” as most mini-markets are called, and you can haul away the Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Financial Times, Sun, Independent, Mirror and Evening Standard. Along with a collection of regional, city, free and sports newspapers.

On my recent trip, I took this back-bending pile to a bench in Green Park and enjoyed a couple of hours of seeing the world through Union Jack eyes. You get the international news you would back home – from the military crackdown in Egypt to Prince George, the newest in line for the British throne, to Oprah Winfrey's claims of racial profiling in a Swiss jewelry store.

But the most fun are the decidedly British stories and how each paper presents the news. In Britain, there is no pretense of an American-style objective press. Each paper is clear about its perspective – from the conservative and staid Times and Telegraph to the liberal Guardian, from the populist Mail and Standard to the decidedly raunchy but right-wing Sun (Murdoch's most infamous remaining brand, with its topless “Page 3 girls”).

You get the usual British obsessions on royals, Nazis, the European Union and the foibles of the French. The tabloids were at their saber-rattling best over the sailing of a British task force to visit Gibraltar, the rock at the mouth of the Mediterranean that's owned by Britain despite decades of Spanish complaints. Depending on which paper you read, it was either the Royal Navy exercising its rights to send ships to a British port (Sun) or an unnecessary provocation toward an ally.

The biggest British story while I was in London was the acid attack on two young British women by Islamist extremists in Zanzibar. The tabloids called for a boycott of the popular British vacation spot. The Daily Mail also railed against what it said was a plan to have all British birth certificates stamped with the European Union symbol – a constellation of stars.

Britain's love/hate relationship with its neighbors across the English Channel was on show with big play for a story on “greedy French” building ostentatious holiday homes in Corsica. There was awe and a little disapproval in a Telegraph story about a plan to build a massive, boxy skyscraper in New York at 432 Park Ave., including an eight-column artist's rendering of the Manhattan skyline with the ugly tower superimposed.

British pride was on display in several stories that reported the mayor of Beijing, after visiting London during the 2012 Olympics, wants to import the roomy black taxicabs that are one of London's signatures. My favorite “only in England” story was the construction chief of the new Crossrail urban commuter line explaining that the project was delayed because every time they start digging, another trove of medieval relics is uncovered and the archaeologists have to be called in.

The London papers also followed the brewing court battle over what city would get the remains of King Richard III, the hump-backed villain of Shakespeare's play, whose bones were discovered under a Leicester parking lot. Leicester wants to turn the bones into a tourist attraction, but it is fighting a claim on the remains from York, Richard III's home base during his lifetime. It's the War of the Roses a half-millennium on, with a courtroom subbing for the battlefield.

A more recent royal-style battle occurred in London's West End when Dame Helen Mirren went out into the street dressed as Queen Elizabeth II to silence street drummers who were ruining the acoustics of her performance as the monarch in “The Audience.” The sold-out, summer-long exhibit at the Victoria & Albert Museum on the impact of glam rocker David Bowie on fashion was still being dissected by critics.

At home, I can spend an hour with a good sports section. Luckily, the thick British sections featuring football (soccer to us), cricket, rugby and golf don't hold my attention for long.

What I always enjoy as a history-minded journalist are the long obituaries in British newspapers, particularly the “quality” papers such as the Times, Telegraph and Guardian.

War heroes, viscounts, criminals, scam artists and even minor politicians get a long and nearly always fascinating goodbye. American actress Karen Black, whose 1960s heyday has long since past, received full or half-page obituaries recounting her career, politics and love life.

Sitting under the giant plane trees in Green Park, I had enjoyed a lovely afternoon receiving a combination lecture/photo exhibit/history book/comedy of a day in the life of Britain. All for less than $10 and all completely compostable, as I dropped them into a bin on the way to dinner in Mayfair.

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